Placement of advertising within web published media content (e.g. web pages) has existed for several years. A common type of web page advertising exists in the form of “banner advertisements”. Banner advertisements are typically placed on the top, sides, and/or bottom of the viewing area of a web page.
Banner advertisements are generally square or rectangular boxes provided with some combination of graphics and/or text directed to the product or service being advertised. Banner advertisements usually include a “hyperlink” to a redirect URL. Users who click on the advertisement are linked to the web site of the manufacturer of the product or service being advertised, or to some other web site which provides additional information about the product or service.
The most simple method for placement of banner advertisements within a web page is for the publisher to simply hard code an advertiser provided banner advertisement within the HTML web page. When a client system establishes an HTTP session to the publisher's web server, the returned web page includes both the web page document content and the embedded banner advertisement. When the banner advertisement is hard coded, all viewers of the web page see the same banner advertisement.
An alternative dynamic system is disclosed in US Published Application 2004/0093327 to Anderson et al. Anderson et al. discloses a system wherein the web published media includes a “space” for an advertisement and, upon a client making a content request to the publisher's web server, the web server makes an advertisement request to an advertising system. The advertising system, which has analyzed the content of the published media, selects an advertisement relevant to the published media and returns the advertisement to the web server for placement within the available space. The webpage that includes the dynamically placed banner advertisement embedded therein is returned to the client making the request.
Again, the advertisement may include an active link to the advertiser's landing page which, if clicked by the viewer, will cause the client to be directed to the advertiser's landing page.
It has also been proposed to include banner advertisements in distributed media content such as HTML email messages. In one example, US Published Application 2005/0076051 to Carobus et al. describes a system for serving content targeted ads in email.
The Carobus et al. system provides an HTML snippet for inclusion in each email sent by the publisher. The HTML snippet includes a URL to which an impression request can be made and which is uniquely associated with the content that was previously made available to the Carobus et al. system.
When a client email system opens the email, an advertisement request is made to a URL identified in the HTML snippet. In response to the advertisement request, the Carobus et al. system: i) looks up previously registered content; ii) builds and returns an advertisement image including one or more relevant advertisements; and iii) assigns and returns a unique session ID. The session ID is returned as a cookie.
When a user “clicks” a rectangular region, the cookie, including the unique session ID, is returned to the server to allow the server to return a redirect URL to a landing page associated with the selected advertisement.
In an alternative system described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/236,460, filed on Sep. 27, 2005 and commonly assigned with the present patent application, the email includes an image map of predetermined parameters, a template identifier identifying the image map and/or its predetermined parameters, a predetermined content request URL, and a unique instance identifier.
When a client email system opens the email, an advertisement request is made to the predetermined content request URL. The advertisement request includes the predetermined email identifier and the template identifier.
In response, the system looks up the parameters associated with the template identifier, builds and returns and advertisement image including one or more relevant advertisements sized to correspond to the image map, and stores an association between the unique ID provided in the request and redirect data associated with the advertiser.
When a user “clicks” on a region of the image map (e.g. one of the advertisements), a connection is made to redirect request URL embedded in the image map. The redirect request includes the unique ID (the same one as previously provided in the content request) to allow the server to return a redirect URL to a landing page associated with the selected advertisement.
A challenge with banner advertisements, whether hard coded or dynamically obtained and whether within published web media content or distributed media content, is that banner advertisements occupy only a small portion of a web page and are easily over looked. When a web page or email is opened on a client system, the user is generally focused on the media content, not the advertisements. Unless the banner advertisement captures the user's attention almost immediately, it will likely be scrolled outside of the viewing window before it is ever noticed. As such, banner advertisements have a degree of ineffectiveness in their aim to provide information about a product or service.
In a related field of invention, it is known to create a self-appearing advertising window which generally dominates the main part of the screen and covers at least a portion of the media content. Although these advertisements can be removed when the user clicks on the appropriate place(s), these advertisements have a much higher rate of being seen by users because media content is covered for either a preset amount of time and/or until the user clicks on the appropriate place(s) to make the advertisement disappear. These advertisements can be intrusive and may result in resentment among users who are accustomed to more passive online advertising methods.
In another separate field of invention, U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,102 to Rosen et al. discloses a system for modifying a mouse cursor image to attract viewer attention. In an embodiment disclosed in FIG. 8 of Rosen et al., the image of the mouse cursor is modified to the shape of a soda bottle to draw the user's attention to a banner advertisement for “Fizzy Cola”. A limitation of the system of Rosen et al. is that the modified cursor still must be in a size and shape that facilitates is function cursor or pointer.
What is needed is a system and method for providing advertisements in conjunction with published or distributed media content as a web page or email, or inline search results, with an enhanced effectiveness in that such advertisements are not easily over looked. Further, what is needed is a system and method for providing such advertisements without the advertisements being intrusive and creating resentment. Further yet what is needed is a system and method for providing advertisements that attract viewer attention but are not limited by requirements that the advertisement also function as a cursor.